Alvan

I respecced General Gamma (Ice/Nrg) after S4 so that he has both Stamina and Conserve Power available when he enters Siren's Call. He's a blapper without Hasten and I haven't regretted the decission yet - without Conserve Power up and running I tend to run out of endurance eventually. Depends on your playstyle, I guess.

Coldest War will be there, unless I oversleep again

I played yesterday in siren's with my non-leadershipped blaster, and the placate effect felt like a forever. As opposed to the brief pause it feels like with my regular blaster who has assault.

So, I did a quick test at Siren's just now (Thanks Hidden Killer and Mr Synnister). The difference seems to be around 10-20% decrease in the Placate time, can't say for sure without a proper stopwatch (the timepiece I was using was a bit sucky for such short-time measurements), but seems there is a difference. So that's about a second of difference between a single assault and no assault. In hectic fighting this actually can be felt. No idea how stacking the placate resistance works and can't give more precise numbers until I've bought a new watch

Can't check this (at the university, no CoH here), but seem to recall that the "bonuses" are as follows:

Tactics: Confuse Resistance, Fear Resistance, +Perception
Assault: Taunt Resistance, Placate Resistance

Confuse and Fear resists work as you would expect them, giving you an out-of-jail-free-card from one low-magnitude application of said mez. Taunt and Placate Resistance, on the other hand, work like Sleep resist in Health - You still get affected by the power, but the duration of the effect is decreased, which means that you only need to keep away for the stalker for a couple of seconds less after he's placated you.

As said, can't be sure if the powers just that, will check when I get back home.

Thanks for the cake-grats, guys

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Oh, + btw, thePhilosopher 4 t3h best badger on Union

'6 badges' that sarcasmo jealous man!

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Yeah, I know . Last I checked he had something like 311 on his main

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With 4 level 50s, can we call him a noob anymore?

Grats again Phil!

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He's even more n00b, 4 50s and still never knows nothing bout the game
Well done dude

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Yeah, if I recall, besides the 5 level badges, the only other badge he has on any of his 50s is Tank Buster...

Very well done, man!

Congratulations to the man! The missions that were required to get him there were insane-fun, even if the medic didn't let me die.

PS. I think aldwych might have something to say about the Finland part, him being from Netherlands, the land of dead. (Holland is the place with wooden shoes and windmills, Netherlands has the restless dead.)

Grats!

Always nice to see familiar faces go Ding

Grats. Didn't know you before the dings-50 mission, but that was fun

Good luck with the squid.

I'll be there with Coldest War.

Hunt for the Red October soundtrack, nothing better to listen to when hunting those pesky stalkers with a crazy Russian Ice Blaster

FotM = Flavor of the Month / Moment.. I think

Hiya Strum.

I'm no expert in brutes. But I've been fighting you quite a lot at Siren's and 'Burg, and if I were you, I'd get Hurl instead of Air Sup, just because it's ranged. Nothing as annoying as that blaster above you, throwing those nasty -jump web grenades while you can do nothing to fight back. But that's from pure PvP perspective. Should also help fight against enemies that cause AoE -jump effects, or -spd, or anything that keeps you from hitting them just now at melee range.

Regarding Hasten - I have it on my stone/en brute, and with it, I only really need two attacks (brawl and boxing, both slotted with recharges) to build up fury fast enough for it to count. So I guess switching something to it might not be a bad idea.

Pretty much 2 holds and Eye of the Magus are the things you need. The later only if the former fails. I used to have 3 holds, but found the third a bit useless so respeced to two. If you feel insecure, lay down a minefield and pull the mob into it. Having cloaking device on when moving around helps too.

This of course, coming from an ice/dev/* blaster. Which means it doesn't help the normal people. The Eye of the Magus thing is pretty much universal blaster-butt-saver. Possibly the best accolade power out there.

51++ = 52+ = 53, or am I doing my math somehow wrong :P

Ok.

The deal is this - I have 3 enhas my characters can't use, but are not part of the power 5 and are over quality 50. So, I will them away. One SO per person, and only if you have a level 50 character that can use them. Reply to this thread and send an ingame -tell to Coldest War. Reply order is the order I'm giving them out.

level 51 Science Knockback Distance SO
level 51 Science ToHit Debuff SO
level 52 Technology Immobilize Duration SO

Grats chili!

You've deserved it

The College of War would like to propose a Coalition to this fine other educational supergroup, perhaps to share some lessons and schedule planning. Pooling our resources could benefit both of our students greatly.

Way to go Spritess!

Today's expedition yielded no real results, except we ruled out the "click 3 doors simultaneously" theory. Assuming the Hamidon Trial exists, we are still missing a contact or another way of activating it.

I'll keep looking.

Me and Stagefright are organizing an expedition into The Hive in couple of hours. If you are interested in joining us, we're meeting at The Hive at 6pm BST. You can message either me (in-game Coldest War or @Alvan) or Nefarious (Stagefright or @Stagefright) for further details.

Stagefright has also put up a Global channel for this puzzle called "Riddle of Hamidon", so if you have a channel-spot left, please join us - helps organizing meetings at The Hive to have an in-game communication channel as well.

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the response was "my lips are sealed" from states

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If that's not an indication there is more to this than meets the eye, I don't know what is.

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true, however it only has a contact starting the trial which is in Terra Volta. The other trial zones (faultline, eden and terra volta) have (or in the case of faultline used to have) an entrance to a trial map (the dam, eden spire, terra volta core). RCS doesnt have this thats why it doesnt make sense to me. Not sure bout hamidon, might be called a trial zone cause its linked to eden.

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I think RCS was originally supposed to have a supergroup trial similar to the Faultline one, but it (like Faultline's) was pulled last minute and has remained a dead zone ever since. RCS's Trial map was supposed to be (surprise, surprise) the Spaceship.

True, they are quite suspicious. Are there any "caves" in the anthills of Eden? If not, they are even more suspicious...

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All 3 of the forest are accessible, however there's always 3-4 monsters inside.
We tried to clear one a while back but we found out nothing useful..

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What about clearing all three forests simultaneously with 3 different groups? Has this been tried in the US, any idea?

I've been pondering what we have in The Hive and what could be done to activate this magical debuff.. Before I start, it's 2:30 am here in Finland, so bear with me if all I'm saying is nonsense. Lot of this has been said here before, but this is all I've come up so far:

The Urban Legend tells us that Hami should be beatable with 27 heroes - 9 groups of 3 people, or 3 groups of 8 + one group of 3 perhaps. 27 isn't a number that divides into equal-sized groups well. Is it a hint on how we should start to solve the puzzle?

There are no NPCs in The Hive, so it can't be activated by talking to someone within the hive. Is it possible there is an NPC outside The Hive who is connected to Hamidon somehow?

There are 3 normal doors in The Hive (at PC area) - if the "Trial" (should such exist) has an indoor mission, it will likely be in one of these. For now, these do nothing.

There are no objects or other interactables in The Hive we know of. /targetcustomnext hasn't at least revealed any to me and none has been reported before. It doesn't mean there aren't any - The statistic terminals in city zones are examples of items that can't be targeted, but can still be activated. This means that the Forests are still a viable option for some sort of an activation mechanism. Perhaps holding all three forests at a time while (if the 3x8 + 1x3 group formation is the correct one) one group goes and does something completely different, like talks to The Woodsman.

There are 9 "cavelike" formations in the anthill spires. These are in my current opinion nonimportant - they can't be affected and they disappear if you move a bit further from the anthill while having world details on a low setting. I think it is unlikely this would happen if they were set to play a major part in the "Hami Trial".

There are 5 types of spawns at the Hive, these are:
- Hamidon (+ Mitos)
- Swarms
- Buffing Lt mobs
- "GM Walls"
- The basic mob

We know it isn't Hamidon. (duh?)

There is at least one oddly-placed Devouring Swarm near the Portal Corp area, but it's unlikely it would be the key to all this.

The Buffing Lts are there probably to make the GM Walls even harder, and were most likely destroyed as well if the Walls went down in the US, so we can pretty much rule them out.

The Walls themselves, as said, have been destroyed. For completenes sake, it should be noted, that the Walls are facing away from Hamidon, so their job is indeed keep people out, not cheer for the blob or something equally silly.

All this leaves us only one possible type of mob that could be triggering the Trial... So. Are we sure there are only one sort of basic mob in The Hive? Are all the Monsters (not counting the Walls) following the same pattern in their behaviour? Is there a specific monster we need to defeat to activate the trial? I seem to also recall that there was a mention of a stray Monster wandering in some nearby area? Could this be related?

Or should we just somehow confuse ourselves in the Tyrant mission and beat up Statesman and steal his nerf bat?